Box Renews Bid to Become Publicaly Traded Stock
Timing wasn’t on the side of Box’s original IPO that was slated to happen in April 2014. Sources close to decision makers at Box note that the company is trying to push forward with a second attempt at grabbing Wall Street’s investment dollars. If all goes as planned, Box’s IPO will available at the end of July or at the beginning of August.
Given the fact that Box recently acquired Streem, a startup that allows end users to host their files exclusively in the cloud and stream the contents of the files to different devices, it seems as if Box is trying to beef up their functionality in efforts to attract additional public investment dollars.
Box will need this momentum, as many stock market analysts became sceptical on whether or not Box could actually make money once public investments started flowing in. It has been noted that Box’s original IPO statement mentioned that the company was seeking out a quarter of a billion dollars in investments, while the cloud storage provider had a net loss of $168.6 million dollars. Box has already raised more than $300 million from private funding sources such as venture capital.
Industry analysts from Forrester research have been quoted as saying, “Depending upon how well this IPO goes for Box, the landscape in general will feel the effect in terms of valuation and future investment opportunities.” While some investors are pessimistic on investing in a company that isn’t turning a profit, it is important to note Box’s place in the cloud storage market which could lead to a profitable future.
According to Forrester, Box was ranked as one of the top enterprise and file sharing products when compared against the top 16 competitors in this sector. Box beat out the likes of IBM, EMC, Citrix and Salesforce in this evaluation by Forrester. What does the future hold for CEO Aaron Levie and Box? If the rumors are true, Box will become a publicly traded company the middle of this summer and from there, the sky seems to be the limit.
